The issue of the historic nature of Jewish, Muslim and Christian links with Jerusalem is very important to the world system's stability.
For Muslims,--please correct me if I'm wrong--it is not Jerusalem but the Saudi Arabian city of Mecca that is the paramount shrine. Mecca, not Jerusalem, is the object of the most important pilgrimage a Muslim must try to make at least once in a lifetime.
On the other hand, all the main holy sites for Jews lie within the post-1967 municipal borders of Jerusalem. Jews at prayers all over the world face toward the Temple Mount--as Muslims face toward Mecca.
Foremost are the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, both of which came within Jordanian jurisdiction in 1949, and to which Israeli Jews were denied access for nearly two decades.
Since 1967, Israel has allowed worshipers of all three faiths unrestricted access to their holy places throughout the city, although Jewish and Christian prayer are barred on the Temple Mount.
In the Old Testament, Jerusalem is mentioned on 656 occasions. Jerusalem have been the seat of the government in the days of Solomon and David.
In the New Testament, the city is the scene of importants events of the Christian faith.
For Christians, Jerusalem contains some of their holiest shrines. In Jerusalem are the reputed sites of the Last Supper and the Crucifixion, the tomb of Jesus, the tomb of the Virgin and the Place of the Ascension. But there are also Christian holy places elsewhere in Israel, among them the birthplace of Jesus (Bethlehem), the scenes of his childhood (Nazareth), the site of his Baptism (by the Jordan River) and the locale of his main preaching and miracles Galilee).
In the Koran, Jerusalem is not mentioned at all.
Later Muslim tradition linked the Koran's reference to al masjid al-aqsa (the furthest sanctuary) with the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.
But there was no building on the Temple Mount at the time of the Prophet; the Holy Land itself is called the "nearest" elsewhere in the Koran; and the verse is held to refer, in Islamic tradition, to a nighttime ascension to a heavenly sanctuary.
For Jews, Jerusalem holds the central spiritual and physical place in the history of the Jews as a people.It became the capital of the first Jewish kingdom in 1004 B.C., almost 3,000 years ago.
With the exception of the Crusader period, no other non-Jewish ruling power of Jerusalem made the city a capital.
SO MY QUESTION IS: Why the Muslims want so badly a part of Jerusalem? No Jews want part of Mecca--so why do they want part of the virtual center of Judaism?
P.S. I'm no Zionist, its a genuine question.
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